posted at 8:01 pm on July 30, 2012 by Allahpundit

Not sure how reliable that Virginia Tech comparison is given the time lapse between the two polls but my strong hunch about the Tucson numbers is that they moved in the opposite direction you’d expect precisely because Gabby Giffords is a political figure. The fear among gun owners and fencesitters was, I assume, that her shooting would galvanize national Democrats to drop their squishiness about gun control and take it up aggressively. Result: A public preemptive backlash to anticipated new regulations, not unlike the sudden gun-buying surge in Colorado that Mark Hemingway flagged last week. Similarly, if The One gets elected to a second term, expect the weeks after election day to be another boom time for gun sellers as people prepare for possible new gun regs. After all, it’s happened before.

This, meanwhile, is fascinating:

I can’t think of an explanation offhand for that trend. In fact, I would have expected the opposite: The worse the economy gets, the more you’d think people would be willing to blame economic despair and “social problems” for driving the disturbed to acts of madness. I’m tempted to say this too is a function of worries about new gun-control regs — the more you fret that the government’s coming for your guns, the more willing you’ll be to blame the killer instead of “society” — but if that were true, we should see a further dip in support for gun control after Aurora in the top graph too, right? Instead, the numbers are flat since last year. Any theories?

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To recap some of the “talking points.”
Studies show that the safest places with the least amount of gun crime are those without gun control laws. The purpose of the 2nd Amendment is for guns to not only provide a theoretical check to federal tyranny, but also against potential civil disorder or organized injustice of whatever sort. Guns, the great equalizer, are of course a godsend to those, especially women or the elderly, who seek protection against home invasions, robbery, and assault.

Explanation for the trend: we’re getting used to what crazy looks like.

At the point of the VA Tech shooting, people following national news didn’t have much data. You had your serial killers, your Ted Bundy types, and you had your “extreme version of high school angst” killers in Colorado, but the whole “Korean dude goes nuts like a movie” thing was new. What was going on?

So we learned. The Giffords thing was a politician, so we all had to consider whether it had something to do with politics, but anyone who listened to the killer’s soliloquy as he walked through the campus had to concede that we were just dealing with crazy.

Then we get to red-haired Joker dude. Creepy smile, vacant expression in court. Yeah, not so hard to go with “seriously crazy” on this one, right from the start.

The real characteristics of schizophrenia need more exposure. It’s way outside most people’s experience. If you can stand it, I recommend an old book called “Operators and Things”, or something close to that — the only first-person narrative I’m aware of, by someone who went there, and, miraculously, came back.

was curious what people thought of atlasshrugs recent post on the right blogosphers refusal to address counter-jihad ?, i’ve noticed this for a long time on this site, been reading this site for 5 years or so, and i have to agre, hotair in it’s effort to be mainstream pretty much has become milquetoast in it’s approach to many issues, including Obamas past and the infiltartion of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Islam in general is not touched here, unless it’s to report on terrorist attacks i don’t even think the Michelle Bachmann controversy was posted on here:

Surrounded by crazy people everyday. Being from Tucson, It just reminded me of that fact. If I was in that Safeway dialing 911 wouldn’t have done squat. Folks see it for what it is. You have to protect yourself. There is no social cure. There have always been crazy people. It just makes me want a larger Caliber. I’m thinking about retiring my P95 and buying a P345.

NEW YORK, NY – U.S. Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ), Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY4) and advocates from the gun safety community announced new legislation being introduced this week to make the sale of ammunition safer for law-abiding Americans who are sick and tired of the ease with which criminals can now anonymously stockpile for mass murder.

The bill, called the Stop Online Ammunition Sales Act, will keep Americans safe bylimiting the ability of people planning for mass murder to anonymously purchase unlimited quantities of ammunition through the Internet or other mail-ordermeans. It would also require that ammunition dealers report bulksales of ammunition to law enforcement.

The shooter who killed 12 and injured 58 in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater this month had purchased over 6,000 rounds of ammunition anonymously on the Internet shortly before going on his killing spree, according to law enforcement officials.
(More…)

Splunge’s premise is BS and obviously crafted out of and for the ahistorical ignorance of 20somethings. What’s happened is that Americans have seen the Democrats outrageously lie for decades about the level of danger and craft poor law after poor law AND seen all their dire predictions fail to materialize. And recognize that psychotics kill regardless of the weapon they use and that criminals can always get guns.
We’ve watched Democrats surf anti-gun legislation in on wavelets of blood and hysteria ever since the 1934 GCA, the 1968 GCA, the ’86 FOPA, Hughes Amendment, Lautenberg Amendment, the 94 AWB. NONE of those laws accomplished their prima facie intent. All were ill-crafted infringements that failed to accomplish their stated goals.
Add to that decades of Shall Issue, Castle Doctrine / Civil Immunity and ‘Stand your ground’ laws that WORK, and Americans are finally tired of creeps like Feinstein, Schumer, Lautenberg and McCarthy trying to wave the bloody shirt.

I think you need to look at crime rates in general over the last 20 years. As crime rates have dropped people probably see crime as less of a social ill, and more of an individual responsibility issue. Couple that with more liberal gun laws in the last 20 years and we only reinforce the notion of personal responsibility when it comes to crime.

From 2008 thru 2011 CA residents have legally purchased over two million firearms and it’s estimated that another 725k will be added in 2012, an average 16% increase in gun sales per year. That doesn’t sound like a state that believes in gun control. Thanks Obama. SF Chronicle.

I think you need to look at crime rates in general over the last 20 years. As crime rates have dropped people probably see crime as less of a social ill, and more of an individual responsibility issue. Couple that with more liberal gun laws in the last 20 years and we only reinforce the notion of personal responsibility when it comes to crime.

NotCoach on July 30, 2012 at 9:09 PM

…ok what is a LIBERAL gun law? Liberal gun laws mean you BAN them I thought.. You mean constitutional gun law? Or gun law that lets people CHOOSE to have a baby glock or not? I’m confused.

I am loathe to use the word “good” in relation to the ugly trend in crazy mass homicides over the past few years, but…
If anything “good” can come of it perhaps it’s the realization that the efforts of the gun-control cult will not reduce the frequency or severity of these murders. They would only impose restrictions on law abiding people and create even more potential victims. Criminals and the criminally insane don’t give a rat’s a$$ about your damned laws, get it? I’d like to think that we are learning that an armed, trained and vigilant citizenry is key to preventing or mitigating such horrors.

History has caught up to the phoney baloney social theorists of the 60′s and the Wasted Generation, proving them wrong on every issue. Poverty does not cause crime. Punishment, not rehabilitation, should be the purpose of prison. Armed citizens make society safer. And so we are as these incidents are on the wane.

The societal implementation of Flower child fantazies and a disarmed citizenry led to the explosion in violence in the decades following the 50s. Now the tide recedes. Criminals are locked up, citizens are armed and we are all tired of lame-ass excuses that can only validate intolerable behavior.

We’re turning back to the normal understanding of the world and human nature our parents and grand parents possessed. To wit, the world is a tough place because it is inhabited by evil men. Not crazy men, not disadvantaged men, not men overcome by social illness of some type, but rationally evil men.

We know the Aurora killer is not mentally ill – he is evil and rationally so. There’s nothing crazy about a mass murderer – he has rationally chosen his course for some sort of thrill. This is not madness, it’s pure evil.

The gun control horse has left the barn, in fact it’s galloped right over the horizon and isn’t about to come back.

Who wants to volunteer to head deep into the Everglades or the Okefenokee and tell their denizens that the guns have to go away?

Bishop on July 30, 2012 at 8:41 PM

Exactly, this battle is so long over that people are planting memorial flowers in the battlefield. Handgun Control International is gone as an organization, the Brady bill is a joke, the Assault Weapons ban is gone, 49 States now have concealed carry (up from 8 in 1986) and the statistics and science is all on our side. Nuts are always going to get weapons, or make them, or improvise. Criminals have their own suppliers (even their own gunsmiths!).

The weak and the innocent are the ones the 2nd protects. Katsujinken, Satsujinken, meaning, “The Sword which cuts down Evil is the Sword which preserves Life.”

By the way, I have learned that you have to REALLY listen to a liberal when they talk. Notice they say, “I am FOR the Rights of hunters and target shooters….in a safe manner but….must be restricted”. This rhetoric goes back to Kerry, who used to answer this question Very carefully and used his hand to show that there was only two legitimate uses for guns, that he believed in the rights of “Hunters AND Target shooters”.

How many people use a nightsighted Sig for Bullseye matches? How many people buy a Glock for their next 200 yard silhouette match? Notice that out of the people who have guns, the number of real formal target shooters is tiny, the number of real hunters is tiny, but the number of people who own Combat weapons is huge. Liberals tried to carve out the majority of gun rights by insisting that the 2nd meant deer hunting and .22 target practice (Which actually could be restricted because of over harvesting of a species in an area or “finding” that unplated lead bullets were an “emissions” hazard!).

The majority of owners want and buy and practice with fighting weapons.